Mshell Bombshell Week One Progress Update

Hello hello my lovelies!
Week ONE in the books and WOW what a week!I am truly loving what I am doing and saw great results this week. I can tell my body responded with shock to the new challenges I put it through! I am seeing huge progress already and feel full of energy most days.

As mentioned in my last post, I was slightly nervous as to how relationships around me would respond to my new plan. It hasn’t been long enough to tell if anything negative will happen but I will say I am so very grateful to have such a supportive man in my life. He has even been kind enough to figure out gym situations in California and Nevada for when we go on our road trip type honeymoon. Can you say amazing? As for parents, they understand but are a little taken back by the amount of preparations involved in it. I am sure there will be people down the road that will pressure me to drink or eat this or that, but I feel really great about my plan so I don’t struggle with saying “no.” I get a cheat meal every so often so I don’t feel completely deprived by any means.

Like I said, this requires a lot of preparation. I have a day where I cook up all my meals for the next 4 days so that nothing goes bad and its all ready to go! As I cannot disclose what I am eating exactly, I will let you know I eat every 2-3 hours for 7 meals. As you can imagine, I rarely get that “I am absolutely starving” feeling. When each meal comes though, I do feel ready to eat. There are meals I struggle with because I never was a fan of that type of food, but I find ways around it. (Hot sauce + Jenn = BFF <3). As for water? I am for a minimum of 2 gallons. It was a lot at first, but I am now feeling like I can get it all down before 6 pm (…drink all the water, pee all the time? yes. Pee ALLTHETIMEZ).

I workout twice a day which is nothing new for me. Some may think it is a lot but personally I love it. I almost lose track of time when I am in the weight room to be honest. I am doing what I love! I am having to cut back on running which is something that I was expecting to happen. I am trying to build muscle and I won’t see my full potential if I continue. So if you are curious as to why my dailymile has been at 0km/week for a while.. that is why! I miss it terribly, especially on beautiful sunny warm days like today but I am sure I will get back to it eventually.

I have been talking with Michelle Davis about a possible goal show for my bikini competition goal I mentioned in my last post. There is a local event happening in November and she thinks it is something I could definitely shoot for so that is something I am looking into at the moment. It is a smaller show but it would be good so that I can understand more about it and feel more comfortable doing it.

Okay, lets get into the progress and the pictures…

I started my plan May 9th with a starting weight of 168.6 with bf% around 28%. I have body fat calipers at home so I could not take my body fat percentage for this weeks progress report unfortunately but I did have a scale. After week one I weighed in at 163 lbs. 5.6 lb loss, pretty good if I do say so myself. I have noticed slimming in my tummy and my arms feel tighter. My face also has thinned out slightly which is usual for me. I always see weight loss in my face first thing! My clothing is already fitting better, which is always a bonus. You can see a very small change in the pictures, but I feel a bigger change in how I feel and my confidence level. Definitely walking a little taller as they say!

I am very excited to see the changes from week one to week four! I have a starting photo in both this bathroom that is pictured above, and in the bathroom back home in Victoria so I have a consent background.

Well that is all for now folks. Hope you are all having a lovely long weekend!

 

 

Team #MshellBombshell

So for those of you who have followed my journey since 2009 on Youtube, you have seen my journey in full. That awkward shy 19 year old attempting to make a ‘vlog’ on Youtube, that was a Weight Watchers member, starting to run. Fast forward a few years and you’ve seen that same girl work as a Weight Watchers leader and receptionist, run many marathons and half marathons, and she is now a Personal Trainer and has kept off over 50 lbs.

So what is next?

As some may know, I spent some time working on my final paper for undergrad. I wrote it about feminism and female body building. (See where I am going?) This is hard for me to admit, but for a while now I have tinkered with the idea of possibly competing in a bikini competition. This scares me for a number of reasons:

I was a very shy and reserved young girl growing up and part of me still is that way. This is completely jumping outside of my comfort zone! The idea of hopping on stage in high heels, a bedazzled bikini, and a horrible spray tan makes me more nervous than anything. Yet I am intrigued to do it! I believe that stepping out of our comfort zones are what makes us grow!
During the first leg of my journey, when I started losing weight, I lost a lot of people out of my life. I stopped partying, drinking and eating unhealthily and many people stopped contacting me around this time and stopped replying to my messages to connect with them. At the time it really hurt bad. Looking back at it now I really see that the people who stuck with me and encouraged me and loved me for who I was, are the ones who matter and are still in my life. This is something I shouldn’t worry about yet I do. Silly that changing habits can cause people to march out of your life!
Lastly, there still seems to be a slight stigma attached to females building lean body mass. My project centered around what I was calling “muscle shaming.” A form of body shaming that targeted women with muscular builds. You can’t help but be nervous for the comments from others about “you are getting too big,” “ it looks masculine” yadda yadda yadda.

Since spending hours and hours researching background on these sorts of competitions, my interest for competing increased. I have wanted to know more about increasing my own lean body mass for a while. I feel my expertise as a personal trainer and former Weight Watchers leader is more geared towards weight loss. So I often felt a bit lost when it came to muscle gain in regards to meals and specific ways to train the body. I have been interested in the idea of bikini competitions for about a year or so and once I learned more about it, I became more intrigued with it. So here I am today. Now what?

I hired a personal trainer/coach. Meet Mshell. I have been following her on Instagram for some time now and I have been impressed by her clients results! I had contemplated on contacting her for months but was unsure if I should do it before the wedding. Pretty much every excuse as to why I shouldn’t contact her. When I thought about why I should contact her, I REALLY WANTED TO CONTACT HER. So I did. She accepts 10 clients every Tuesday and I contacted her about 4 or 5 times before this week. I am finally now a true Mshell Bombshell!

That being said, I will not be sharing my workouts, supplements/vitamins or what I am eating with my audience (blogging, Youtube or otherwise) as I am respecting my lovely trainers work! Another question I had was “what about Beachbody?” This doesn’t mean I am not coaching anymore. Just because I am working for a goal that isn’t a Beachbody product doesn’t mean I don’t believe in the products. I believe a whole of a heck lot in Beachbody products. I am seen amazing results through Insanity and Shakeology and have loved almost every DVD fitness program I use from them. I am just focusing more so on my competition goal that I have for the future (no date set of yet!). I am still coaching many lovely people with their Shakeology or other BB programs via Facebook, so if you ever want to join in on the group challenges I host please contact me and I would be happy to pop you in one of my groups!

So that is that. My new goal and my new coach! I am so very excited to embark on this journey. I am using the next few days to prep and get all my groceries and materials I need together. Then we are gonna ROCK THIS THANG! I will post updates from time to time, but I would say check my Instagram for more frequent updates!

Love you all and thank you for your continuous support!

One step at a time

Wanted to share a few thoughts that have been with me the past few weeks…

Since I have been officially DONE undergrad since April 22nd, I have taken the past few weeks to have a bunch of time to myself to reflect, read and renew myself. I have been thinking a lot about what overwhelms me most and how to overcome that. I will be upfront to say I have gained a bit of my weight back, about 10 lbs, and it has made me feel pretty frustrated, annoyed with myself and unhappy. I have experienced some extreme “self love” emotions to extreme lows of “self hate” for my body image in the past few months. It’s exhausting. So I took these “personal development” days to step back and reflect on what to do from here.

I realize that I have a habit of looking too far ahead and not embracing myself and the moment. I am happiest when I live in the moment. When I leave my worries of what could happen if I take this or that risk behind, I find I am freed. I looking too far ahead of where I am right now to be somewhat destructive as it makes me feel overwhelmed and almost “not good enough” to carry on. So what I have decided to do is step back and embrace each step for its ups and downs. From time to time, look bad to admire the battles I have fought and move forward with new ones.

You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. This was an idea I followed when I started my journey in 2009, and I found a way of losing grip of that idea. One step at a time. I need to focus on each step in order to move forward and feel at ease. I know I am a high anxiety and high stressed individual, so this is what works best for me.

 

Sweating for the Wedding: week 5

Hello!

So this week was better, though I woke up with low motivation last few days. Anyway, Thursday is my first appointment for alterations. Also, I kicked BUTT on the 10 km and beat my goal. Came in at 47:27 woot! Felt awesome about that!! Crazy to think it took me over an hour only a short while ago! Now lets see how last weeks goals went:

Last weeks goals:

• Hydrate!!
• Saturday=rest day to keep my legs fresh for Sundays 10 km race!
• Follow the Tone it UP! 7 day slim down in time for my alterations next week
• Positive mindset

I kicked butt this week . I altered the tone it up plan slightly since the last few days are pretty low cal/low water and low carb and I need the energy to continue on with my day and workouts. So other than that my goals all went according to plan.

As I said, alterations are on Thursday! I have the shoes and everything. I have officially started having weird ass wedding dreams. Last night consisted of the makeup artist not showing, so I had to do my own makeup with someone elses makeup bag AND in the dark…. Yeah. Weird. I don’t know!

This weeks goals:

• Keep motivated!
• differ between cravings and hunger
• Don’t beat yourself up
• Eat as clean as you can

So I am going to Vancouver tomorrow and will be there for some time as I am getting wedding stuff done and what not. I have packed my Shakeology (seriously cannot get enough of this stuff! email me if you want to know more about it!), my Beachbody DVDs (insanity, turbofire and les mills combat!) and some workout gear. Also my wedding shoes of course. I find it hard to stick to healthy eating at my parents place as they have many more temptations in the cabinets than I do here at my place. I am going to try my best to stick to plan, but if I treat myself..NO being mean to Jenn (hehe). I am my worst enemy sometimes. Also, I have felt little motivation to eat well and workout hard last few days, so I am going to try my best to keep motivation up! And lastly, I took a seminar recently about cravings vs hunger and mindful eating. I want to practice this this week as I find myself giving into cravings over hunger much of the time!

Hope you are all having a lovely week!

 

 

 

Sweating for the Wedding: Week 3/4

So good work Jenn on keeping up with this blog series… not. So here were my goals from LAST time (apr 10th).

Old goals

• Work out once a day
• Drink 3 of my big 40 ounce water bottles daily (drink one cup of water before coffee and breakfast in the morning)
• pre-plan meals to bring with me to campus or to cafes (depending where I am working on my research)
• Get enough sleep!
• Don’t over due it with the coffee!

So I didn’t eat my BEST last week. My self control was no where to be found! We had a little celebration with the department to celerbated our graduation and that included cookies, pizza, cake, sushi and so on…holy yum…holy calories! Ill be honest! It was a tough week for me. I also drank gallons…errr…A LOT of coffee! I was on a deadline so I guess it just became habit. I made sure not to go CRAZY over the top with my workouts as I have been feeling pretty lethargic and over trained..so I stepped back.  So my goals this week I WILL stick too!

This weeks goals:

• Hydrate!!
• Saturday=rest day to keep my legs fresh for Sundays 10 km race!
• Follow the Tone it UP! 7 day slim down in time for my alterations next week
• Positive mindset

Alrighty. So I have the TC10km coming up on Sunday and I am aiming for a TOUGH PB for me. I know this is a heavily populated race so that is why I call it a “tough PB.” I am aiming for under 48 minutes (eek!). I want fresh legs so I made sure to train legs yesterday and I am planning on having an active rest day on Saturday by doing some yoga to stretch out and feel goooood! I have the Gluten Free Tone it UP! Diet plan and that includes the slim down. I always feel good doing this and will be doing it this week to feel confident at my alteration date next week in Vancouver. Next, I have been a little negative with the terrible eating I did last week. My body has been feeling fluffy and heavier which makes me feel horrible about myself. So I am working my butt off and keeping to my food plan this week! I will be positive and be on my side instead of being my own bully!

That is all for now, may blog later as I have A TON of extra time now that I am DONE school! (Just have to walk across the stage next and its FINAL!)

Ciao <3

In honor of Boston…

Tomorrow I will be wearing a race shirt to show solidarity as a runner and display a race photo.

I learned of today’s events while I was on campus working on finalizing my research assignment and was stunned. Many emotions are still running through me; confusion, anger, sadness, frustration. I am grateful that my friends running in the race today came out unharmed, only with a heavy heart. My love, prayers, and thoughts are sent out to everyone around the world that have been harmed by this.

I tried my best to stay away from social media and the news for most of the day, since I feel this is something that really gets to me. Now I can’t help but feel emotional. I just came across a Google doc with contact for people who are offering their homes in Boston to those who need a place to stay during this time. You can’t help but tear up to see people come together like this.

I really am not too sure what else to say, I am in shock still.

 

Sweating for the Wedding: Week Two

Hello!

Well, I am a tad late but here is an update on last weeks goals!

Last weeks goals:

• Track every morsel on My Fitness Pal. Bite it, write it yo!
• At least a gallon a day of water
• More vegetables!
• Dig DEEPER during my workouts, especially while I am away!
• Think before I eat! Think about if I am really hungry or not!

Okay so I didn’t get 100% but I don’t feel bad about it. I was away enjoying time with family and no I wasn’t 100% clean with my eating. I am okay with that. I am back on to my usual routine and feel much better! I brought Insanity and Les Mills Combat with me on my trip and worked out every day except the day we flew as it was my rest day. I made sure to bring my water bottle with me everywhere I went too.

This weeks goals:

• Work out once a day
• Drink 3 of my big 40 ounce water bottles daily (drink one cup of water before coffee and breakfast in the morning)
• pre-plan meals to bring with me to campus or to cafes (depending where I am working on my research)
• Get enough sleep!
• Don’t over due it with the coffee!

So this week I am focusing on writing my research paper (5 pages of 25 done! haha) which is due in a few weeks. I love pulling 2 a day workouts if my schedule will allow me, but this week I am telling myself to stick to one unless I am really feeling up for it! Also, I will be bringing all my meals with me to campus or the coffee shop so I can work on my project and not eat naughty treats. The last goal will be the hardest for me. I always like having a BIG cup of coffee with me before I sit down to write…so this may be tough but I am sure I will get through it!! I am also allowing myself to wake up when my body wants me to wake up so that I get enough sleep. I rarely sleep in past 9 so it isn’t too big a deal! and of course hydration is key. Been drinking water before anything when I wake up which only makes sense. When your body has been sleeping for 6 or more hours you need to get some water in you!

 

Anyway, that is my short update for week two! Here is to a productive and healthy week!

<3